Slave rebellion
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A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves, as a way of fighting for their freedom. Rebellions of slaves have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery or have practiced slavery in the past. A desire for freedom and the dream of successful rebellion is often the greatest object of song, art, and culture amongst the enslaved population. These events, however, are often violently opposed and suppressed by slaveholders.
Ancient
The
One of the most successful slave rebellions in history was the
Africa
In 1808 and 1825, there were slave rebellions in the Cape Colony, newly acquired by the British. Although the slave trade was officially abolished in the British Empire by the Slave Trade Act of 1807, and slavery itself a generation later with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, it took until 1850 to be halted in the territories which were to become South Africa. [8]
São Tomé and Príncipe
On 9 July 1595, Rei Amador, and his people, the Angolars, allied with other enslaved Africans of its plantations, marched into the interior woods and battled against the Portuguese. It is said that day, Rei Amador and his followers raised a flag in front of the settlers and proclaimed Rei Amador as king of São Tomé and Príncipe, making himself as "Rei Amador, liberator of all the black people".
Between 1595 and 1596, part of the island of São Tomé was ruled by the Angolars, under the command of Rei Amador. On 4 January 1596, he was captured, sent to prison and was later executed by the Portuguese. Still today, they remember him fondly and consider him a national hero of the islands.
In the first decades of the 17th century, there were frequent slave revolts in the Portuguese colony of São Tomé and Príncipe, off the African shore, which damaged the sugar crop cultivation there.
Asia
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The Zanj Rebellion was the culmination of a series of small revolts. It took place near the city of Basra, in southern Iraq over fifteen years (869−883 AD). It grew to involve over 500,100 slaves, who were imported from across the Muslim empire.
The
When the Russian general
Europe
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (March 2013) |
In the 3rd century BCE, Drimakos (or Drimachus) led a slave revolt on the slave entrepot of Chios, took to the hills and directed a band of runaways in operations against their ex-masters.[12][13]
The Servile Wars (135 to 71 BCE) were a series of slave revolts within the Roman Republic.
- The First and Second Servile War occurred in Sicily.
- The Third Servile War (73 to 71 BCE) occurred in mainland Italy. Spartacus, an escaped gladiator supposedly from Thrace, became the most prominent of the rebel leaders; Marcus Licinius Crassus suppressed the insurgents. Many modern rebels (such as the Spartacus League) have since regarded Spartacus as a heroic figure.
Other slave revolts occurred elsewhere.
- Eumenes III, king of Pergamon from 133 to 129 BCE, promised freedom to slaves to draw support against the Roman Republic.
A number of slave revolts occurred in the Mediterranean area during the early modern period:
- 1748: Hungarian, Georgian and Maltese slaves on board a galley named Lupa revolted and sailed the ship to Malta.[14]
- 1749: Conspiracy of the Slaves – Muslim slaves in Malta planned to rebel and take over the island, but plans leaked out beforehand and the would-be rebels were arrested and many were executed.[14]
- 1760: Christian slaves on board the Ottoman ship Corona Ottomana revolted and sailed the ship to Malta.[14]
North America
This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2022) |
Numerous slave rebellions and insurrections took place in
Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness invented by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851 that allegedly caused black slaves to run away. Today, drapetomania is considered an example of pseudoscience, and part of the edifice of scientific racism.
Slave resistance in the
The
Although only involving about seventy slaves and free blacks,
The
The historian
North America
Part of North American slave revolts |
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2020) |
- Santo Domingo Slave Revolt (1521)
- San Miguel de Gualdape Rebellion (1526)
- Bayano Wars (1548)
- Gaspar Yanga's Revolt (c. 1570) near the Mexican city of Veracruz; the group escaped to the highlands and built a free colony
- Gloucester County Conspiracy (1663)[21]
- New York Slave Revolt of 1712
- Samba Rebellion(1731)
- Stono Rebellion (1739)
- New York Conspiracy of 1741 (alleged)
- During the American Revolutionary War, slaves reacted to Dunmore's Proclamation and the Philipsburg Proclamation, fleeing and sometimes taking up arms in the British military against their former masters (for example in the Ethiopian Regiment)
- Pointe Coupée Slave Conspiracy of 1791
- Pointe Coupée Slave Conspiracy of 1795
- Gabriel's Rebellion (1800)
- Rebellions in a dozen North Carolina counties (May and June, 1802)[22]
- Chatham Manor Rebellion (1805)
- Slaves in three North Carolina counties conspire to poison their owners, in some cases successfully (1805)[22]
- German Coast uprising (1811)[23]
- Aponte Conspiracy(1812)
- George Boxley Rebellion (1815)
- Denmark Vesey's Rebellion(1822)
- Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831)
- Baptist War (1831)
- Black Seminole Slave Rebellion (1835–1838) [24]
- Amistad seizure (1839)[25]
- Creole case(1841) (the most successful slave revolt in US history)
- 1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation[26]
- Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion (1849)[27]
- John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (1859) (failed attempt to organize a slave rebellion)
Slave ship revolts
There are 485 recorded instances of slaves revolting on board slave ships.[28] A few of these ships endured more than one uprising during their career.[28]
Most accounts of revolts aboard slave ships are given by Europeans. There are few examples of accounts by slaves themselves. William Snelgrave reported that the slaves who revolted on the British ship Henry in 1721 claimed that those who had captured them were "Rogues to buy them" and that they were bent on regaining their liberty.[29] Another example that Richardson gives is that of James Towne who gives the account of slaves stating that Europeans did not have the right to enslave and take them away from their homeland and "wives and children".[30]
Richardson compares several factors that contributed to slave revolts on board ships: conditions on the ships, geographical location, and proximity to the shore.[29] He suggests that revolts were more likely to occur when a ship was still in sight of the shore. The threat of attack from the shore by other Africans was also a concern. If the ship was hit by disease and a large portion of the crew had been killed, the chances of insurrection were higher.[29] Where the slaves were captured also had an effect on the number of insurrections.[29] In many places, such as the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra, the percentage of revolts and the percentage of the slave trade match up.[29] Yet ships taking slaves from Senegambia experienced 22 percent of shipboard revolts while only contributing to four and a half percent of the slave trade.[30] Slaves coming from West Central Africa accounted for 44 percent of the trade while only experiencing 11 percent of total revolts.[30]
Lorenzo J. Greene gives many accounts of slave revolts on ships coming out of New England. These ships belonged to Puritans who controlled much of the slave trade in New England.[31] Most revolts on board ships were unsuccessful. The crews of these ships, while outnumbered, were disciplined, well fed, and armed with muskets, swords, and sometimes cannons, and they were always on guard for resistance.[32] The slaves on the other hand were the opposite, armed only with bits of wood and the chains that bound them.[33]
However, some captives were able to take over the ships that were their prisons and regain their freedom. On October 5, 1764 the New Hampshire ship Adventure captained by John Millar was successfully taken by the enslaved aboard.[32] The slaves on board revolted while the ship was anchored off the coast and all but two of the crew, including Captain Millar, had succumbed to disease.[34] Another successful slave revolt occurred six days after the ship Little George had left the Guinea coast. The ship carried ninety-six slaves, thirty-five of which were male.[32] The slaves attacked in the early hours of the morning, easily overpowering the two men on guard. The slaves were able to load one of the cannons on board and fire it at the crew. After taking control of the ship they sailed it up the Sierra Leone River and escaped.[32] After having defended themselves with muskets for several days below decks the crew lowered a small boat into the river to escape. After nine days of living on raw rice they were rescued.[35]
Mariana P. Candido notes that enslaved Africans worked on the ships that transported other Africans into slavery. These men, 230 in all,[36] were used onboard slave ships for their ability to communicate with the slaves being brought on board and to translate between Captain and slaver.[37] Enslaved sailors were able to alleviate some of the fears that newly boarded slaves had, such as fear of being eaten.[38] This was a double-edged sword. The enslaved sailors sometimes joined other slaves in the revolts against the captain they served. In 1812 enslaved sailors joined a revolt on board the Portuguese ship Feliz Eugenia just off the coast of Benguela.[36] The revolt took place below decks. The sailors, along with many of the children who were on board, were able to escape using small boats.[39]
South America and the Caribbean
In 1552 Miguel de Buría [42] a former slave in San Juan, Puerto Rico,[43] reigned as the King of Buría Golden mines in the modern-day state of Lara, Venezuela, after leading the first African rebellion in the country's history.[44] His incumbency began in 1552 and lasted until 1554 after a failled attempt to take Barquisimeto city was killed by Spanish forces.
Between 1538 and 1542, a Guaraní slave from present-day Paraguay named Juliana killed her Spanish master and urged other indigenous women to do the same, ending up executed by order of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.[45][46] Her rebellion is regarded as one of the earliest recorded indigenous uprisings against the Spanish colonization of the Americas.[47][48]
San Basilio de Palenque in Colombia, 16th century to the present, led by Benkos Biohó.
St. John, 1733, in what was then the Danish West Indies. The St. John's Slave Rebellion is one of the earliest and longest lasting slave rebellions in the Americas. It ended with defeat, however, and many rebels, including one of the leaders Breffu, committed suicide rather than being recaptured.[49]
The most successful slave uprising was the
In the 1730s, the militias of the Colony of Jamaica fought the Jamaican Maroons for a decade, before agreeing to sign peace treaties in 1739 and 1740, which recognised their freedom in five separate Maroon Towns.[citation needed]
The
]The
Cuba had slave revolts in 1795, 1798, 1802, 1805, 1812 (the Aponte revolt), 1825, 1827, 1829, 1833, 1834, 1835, 1838, 1839–43 and 1844 (the La Escalera conspiracy and revolt).[citation needed]
Revolts on the Caribbean Islands
Vincent Brown, a professor of History and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard, has made a study of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In 2013, Brown teamed up with Axis Maps to create an interactive map of Jamaican slave uprisings in the 18th century called, "Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761, A Cartographic Narrative".
Later, in 1795, several slave rebellions broke out across the Caribbean, influenced by the Haitian Revolution [citation needed]:
- In Jamaica, the descendants of Africans who fought and escaped from slavery and established free communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica (Maroons), fought to preserve their freedom from British colonialists, in what came to be known as the Second Maroon War. However, this featured just one of the five Maroon towns in Jamaica.
- In Dominica there was the Colihault Uprising.
- In Saint Lucia there was the Bush War in 1795.
- In the Saint Vincent islands the Second Carib Warbroke out.
- In Fedon Rebellion.[53]
- Curaçao had a slave revolt in 1795, led by Tula.
- In Venezuela, the insurrection led by José Leonardo Chirino occurred in 1795.
- In Bussa.
- In Guyana there was the Demerara Rebellion of 1795.[54]
- In the British Virgin Islands, minor slave revolts occurred in 1790, 1823 and 1830.
- In Cuba, there were several revolts starting in 1825 with an uprising in Guamacaro and ending with the revolts of 1843 in Matanzas. These revolts have been widely studied by scholars such as Robert L. Paquette, Gloria García, Manuel Barcia, Aisha K. Finch and Michele Reid-Vazquez.
- In the Danish West Indies an 1848 slave revolt led to emancipation of all slaves in the Danish West Indies.
- In Puerto Rico in 1821, Marcos Xiorro planned and conspired to lead a slave revolt against the sugar plantation owners and the Spanish Colonial government. Even though the conspiracy was unsuccessful, Xiorro achieved legendary status among the slaves and is part of Puerto Rico's folklore.[55]
- The St. Joseph Mutiny of 1837 in Trinidad, which was led by mutineers from the British Army's 1st West India Regiment (many of whom had been liberated from illegal slave ships by the Royal Navy).[56]
Brazil
Many slave rebellions occurred in
See also
Bibliography
- Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 6. ed., New York: International Publ., 1993 - classic
- Matt D. Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle Against African Slavery, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006
- David P. Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001
- Eugene D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World, Louisiana State University Press 1980
- Joao Jose Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture), Johns Hopkins Univ Press 1993
- Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007.
- Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007.
- Urbainczky, Theresa Slave Revolts in Antiquity (University of California Press, Berkley), 2008
References and notes
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- ^ Aptheker, Herbert; Woodward, C. Vann. "The Slave Revolts". Nybooks.com. Archived from the original on 2009-01-12. Retrieved 2013-10-04.
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- ^ Eden, J. (2018). Slavery and Empire in Central Asia. Storbritannien: Cambridge University Press. p. 187-189
- ^ Eden, J. (2018). Slavery and Empire in Central Asia. Storbritannien: Cambridge University Press. p. 187-189
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[Drimakos] took to the mountains of Chios and organized a band of runaways to carry out guerilla operations against the landed property of their former masters.
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- ^ ISBN 9780313323294. Archivedfrom the original on 2022-09-14. Retrieved 2017-08-22.
- ^ Shapiro, Herbert. "The Impact of the Aptheker Thesis: A Retrospective View of American Negro Slave Revolts". Science and Society.
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- ^ "Nat Turner's Rebellion". PBS. Archived from the original on August 7, 2011. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
- ^ Louis A. DeCaro Jr., John Brown – The Cost of Freedom: Selections from His Life & Letters (New York: International Publishers, 2007), p. 16.
- ^ Hahn, Steven (2004). "The Greatest Slave Rebellion in Modern History: Southern Slaves in the American Civil War". southernspaces.org. Archived from the original on April 16, 2021. Retrieved August 22, 2010.
- ^ Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619–1877, New York: Hill and Wang, 1993, pp. 73–77
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- ^ "Slave Revolt of 1842". Digital.library.okstate.edu. Archived from the original on 2012-11-03. Retrieved 2013-10-04.
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- ^ Greene, Lorenzo. Mutiny on Slave Ships. p. 346.
- ^ a b c d Greene, Lorenzo. Mutiny on Slave Ships.
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- ^ Greene. Mutiny on Slave Ships. p. 349.
- ^ Greene. Mutiny on Slave Ships. p. 351.
- ^ a b Candido, Mariana P. (September 2010). "Different Slave Journeys: Enslaved African Seamen on Board Portuguese Ships c. 1760-1820s". 31 (3): 400.
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- ^ Rodríguez 2006, p. 224
- ^ Simón 1627, p. 83
- ^ Duque 2013, p. 325
- ^ Colmán Gutiérrez, Andrés (December 5, 2020). "En busca de la India Juliana". Última Hora (in Spanish). Asunción. Archived from the original on April 23, 2022. Retrieved December 12, 2021.
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- ^ "An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti: Comprehending a View of the Principal Transactions in the Revolution of Saint Domingo: with Its Ancient and Modern State". World Digital Library. Archived from the original on 19 December 2013. Retrieved 23 April 2013.
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Further reading
External links
- "Bahia Revolt". africanholocaust.net.
- Hart, Richard (Ex-Attorney General of Grenada). "Invisible Abolitionists". brh.org.uk. Audio on slave revolts in the Caribbean
- "Home". The Slave Rebellion Website. Archived from the original on 2016-03-17. Retrieved 2016-03-25.
- "Rebellion: John Horse and the Black Seminoles, First Black Rebels to Beat American Slavery". johnhorse.com. These maroons affiliated with Seminole Indians in Florida led a slave rebellion that would be the largest in U.S. history.
- "Welcome to Encyclopædia Britannica's Guide to Black History". Encyclopædia Britannica.